Maths

Helping your child

We are having a big push in school on learning times tables. We are often asked at parents’ evenings what can be done to help children at home with their Maths. Supporting your child to learn their times tables is a brilliant way of helping your child and it really can make a huge difference!

Expectations of the New Curriculum

It is expected that by the end of year 4, children should be confident in recalling all multiplication and corresponding division facts tables up to 12 x 12.

e.g. I know 2 x 5 = 10 therefore I know 10 ÷ 2 = 5

Multiplication facts are easiest to learn when:

- You practise them often. Persevere.

- You find patterns.

- You chant them.

- You find ways of remembering them.

- You relate them to what you already know

- You make it FUN!

Multiplication Tables Check

You may have heard announcements about the Multiplication Tables Check coming in for year 4 children. Here’s what you need to know:

Maths is a big subject and we appreciate there’s more to it than times-tables. However, a lot of the rich, interesting maths is related to multiplication and these are hard to fully grasp without fluent recall of the tables. For that reason, learning the tables is fundamental.

The checks will not be compulsory until 2020 so current year 2s will be the first children to do them when they’re in year 4. We are considering volunteering the current year 3s to do the checks in 2019.

The checks consist of 25 questions. The questions will only be multiplication and they will go up to 12×12.

To help prepare children for the upcoming Multiplication Tables Check, we have decided to purchase the Timetable Rockstars programme to support your children to practise learning their tables both in and out of school. Before making the decision to buy the programme, we trialled out Times-tables Rockstars with our current year 4 children and the majority seemed to love it! Here are some quotes from some of the children below:

“I like Timestable rockstars because you can make a cool avator” Aaminah 4B

“I liked competing with other people around the world!” Suddais 4H

“I think its really good because it gives you multiplication and division questions just like the Byron blue tests” Kasim 4W.

“I like it because it helped me to finally get my first badge” Hanifa 4H

Multiplication facts are easiest to learn when you practise them often! We are recommending that every child practise their times-table using the programme for a minimum of ten minutes every night. For more information about how you can support your child at home with their multiplication knowledge, please refer to the ‘Times-tables Rockstar handbook’ and/or the ‘Times-tables games and strategy’ booklet on our school website.